In an excellent article on the 2006’s lowest-grossing movies in Sunday’s Post, my colleague Reed Tucker answers a question that’s been bugging me for the last couple of years. Why are so many little movies receiving token theatrical releases, sometimes days before they premiere on video? These so-called vanity bookings — where a distributor or the filmmaker himself pays to rent a screen — usually turn up at the Village East, the Empire, Cinema Village, the Quad, the Pioneer and lately even at the once-prestigious Angelika (though these venues will deny booking dogs for dollars). Anyway, here’s the answer that Reed dug up: “The residuals paid to actors are much higher on a straight-to-video release than a theatrical one, so distributors often rent theaters to screen a film for a few days to avoid having to pay the actors more.” Plus they get (generally negative) reviews for movies that would be ignored by major media outlets if they went straight to video.